PETER BREMERS

Born in Maastricht in the Netherlands in 1957, Peter got interested in fashion, architecture, and design at a young age. It was not until his years at Art College that he developed a profound appreciation for 3-dimensional art. While studying, he found a love for light and form, and started creating light-sculptures. After leaving college he kept making his unique light sculptures and started exhibiting all over Europe. His work got published in trendsetting design books and he would probably still make light-objects, if he didn’t happen to walk into a glassblowing workshop with Andries Copier at the Jan van Eyck Academy. Mesmerized by the glowing light of hot glass at the end of a blowpipe, he did not only decide to start investigating the possibilities of blown glass for his objects but also did a post-graduate at the Jan van Eyck Academy. He absorbed as much knowledge about glassblowing as he could. In 1989 Lino Tagliapietra gave a workshop in Amsterdam. Peter participated eagerly and two of his designs that Lino executed, were purchased by the Art Museum of the Hague. In the same year he went to work with master blower Neil Wilkin in England. They build a highly skilled team, producing many blown objects, often using grail-technique (glass made with one or more color overlays that are cooled, engraved, reheated, and encased in a layer of clear glass and blown again to expand the decorative engravings). It resulted in many successful exhibits and his first book Metamorphosis.

Another significant change in his work and his approach to glass as a medium came after a very influential and inspiring voyage to the Antarctic in 2001. He translated his impressions of the landscapes, the glaciers and the square rigged three-master he traveled on, into blown glass. Doing so, he found that even though the results were remarkable, he could not blow an iceberg. He was so enthralled with the many icebergs he saw that he refers to it as “nature`s floating sculpture garden”. Being trained as a sculptor, he quite easily changed over to kiln-casting, a technique used specifically successful by studios in the Czech Republic, which he has worked with since.                                       

The series of sculptures known as Icebergs and Paraphernalia became an internationally acclaimed success. In the book by the same name, British art glass expert Dan Klein called the sculptor Peter Bremers, somewhat to his surprise, a landscape artist. His fascination with ice and the way it transfers light, made him undertake more travels to the Polar Regions, resulting in a vast body of ever-expanding work showing nature`s endless source of inspiration for this artist.     

A visit to Arizona in 2008 changed not only his personal life, as he met his muse Janet there.  The Canyons and Deserts of The Four Corners also inspired him to a new body of work by the same title. To him it was a logical step to go from the cold transparent ice to the hot density of the desert`s rocks and mountains. Once again, this earth and it`s awesome beauty intrigued the artist, leading to a collection of unique sculptures. The area of Sedona became a refuge. A perfect place for long hikes through nature and quiet time for reflection while far away from his studio in the Netherlands.          Traveling has always been a necessity. His curiosity as a human being and an artist for our planet`s cultural, spiritual, and natural diversity took him to all the continents. As he puts it, ‘when we travel to other countries and cultures, not only our outer world changes but so does our inner world and the way we perceive our planet and fellow beings, as well as ourselves.’  A body of work called The Inward Journey resulted from that.   

The artist carries this concept of bringing together the profane and the celestial into all his creations. The sculptures are often quiet and introspective, with series like 7 Bodies, Perception, Transformation and more recently Positive Space and Initiations.  About the Positive Space series, he wrote: “Finding ourselves in a time of increasingly negative perception of every day`s news events and an overall rising feeling of being unsafe in a world of religious, political, and social divisiveness, we may forget to focus on the possibilities and comfort offered by positive action and attitude. Positive Space symbolizes tolerance, appreciation, hope and opportunity.” 

Another more recent series is called Vibrations. Everything that holds energy is in flux and vibrates. Vibrations can be slow, as currents in water and wind, or fast like light or high pitch sound. Making forms that make energy visible in static sculpture, the artist uses the symbolism of waves in lines and volumes, regular or irregular, enhancing, or disturbing, growing or calming, interfering or meditative. The direction is often linear but subject to change. Lines can interact. By using the materiality of structure, the movement can be regular or shattered. Colors are soothing or energizing.

Clarity and opaqueness question the viewers emotional senses. As a form language Peter Bremers defines human energy as a complex state of movement and interaction, resulting in emotional wellbeing or isolation.

Ice Revisited

“When I was in Antarctica in 2001, the phenomenon of climate change was already known. But I decided to use the overwhelming beauty of the South Pole and later the Arctic as inspiration for my series "Icebergs & Paraphernalia". The floating ice shapes, the beautiful landscapes, and the purity of the skies in all their shades of color touched me deeply. So deep, that I wanted nothing more than to translate what had become so dear to me during my travels, into glass sculptures. Foremost as a tribute to nature and its endless beauty.

Now it's 2024... I can no longer ignore what we face daily on the news. Partly due to questions from others and the deep-felt desire to visit ice areas again and to transform a reappraisal of my experiences, with the knowledge of now, a new body of work is taking form.

Nowhere is it easier to get up close and personal with the shrinking glaciers than in Iceland. One can literally walk up to the glaciers, climb them, and even experience them from the inside. Blue caverns, ice caves of unbridled beauty. But, in the four visits so far I've learned how the retreat of the glaciers is accelerating. It is visible in the tracks, the grooves in the mountain landscape, which has been formed by the glaciers. Every time, I see that the ice melts, the streams grow into rivers with jingling ice crystals floating on the surface. Crumbling ice shards from the Vatnajökull glacier collect in Glacial bay before making their way to the open sea via a short river. There it is thrown by tides and winds onto the black lava beach, called Diamond Beach. The ice floes, large and small, sparkle in the sun like gems on the black sand, before melting and being swallowed by the sea.

This impermanence is also full of beauty and wonder. From ice to water.

Still in glass but now with the emphasis on this transformation. Using optical illusion, so typical of glass, I look for a dynamic design language that makes this transformation visible. The objects have no front or back and with each rotation the image, light, and color changes.

The natural lens structures as can be seen in the glacier’s ice caves, the reflections of the light and the dark crevasses, perhaps as a harbinger of a gloomy future. The beauty of nature is still undeniably present. For me, glass is once again my medium to capture this beauty, but it does not replace the ice.

Challenged by public and private commissions, Peter works with glass in an array of techniques, including blowing, casting, fusing, slumping, and laminating. The artist occasionally works in bronze, stone, aluminum, and chrome. In his own words: “There is one mayor reason why I love doing commissions. You can be asked to create something that you might not have done by your own choice. So, you are forced to think ‘outside the box’ and that can be incredibly challenging and… rewarding.”

In Peter’s opinion he is still working with light, color, and form. He was a guest artist and tutor at universities in Europe, Australia, South Africa, China, Turkey, and Japan. 

In his sculptures he shares his inner process, spiritual awareness, and life philosophy. Meanwhile presenting us a mirror; sometimes thought provoking or meditative but always reflecting a need for understanding and appreciating the individual as well as the universal.

2021 the artist was honored with the “Artist of the Future Award” as well as a one-man exhibition by the Imagine Museum, St. Petersburg Florida.

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

Barbara Achilles Stiftung Museum, Hamburg, Germany.

Boymans van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam, Netherlands.

Eskisehir Metropolitan Contemporary Glass Arts Museum, Turkey.

Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, USA.

Glasmuseet Ebeltoft, Denmark.

Glasmuseum Alter Hof Herding, Coesfeld Lette, Germany.

Glass and Light Hotel & Gallery, Norfolk, VA. USA.

Grassi Museum Leipzig, Germany.

Imagine Museum, St. Petersburg, FL, USA.

Kunst und Gewerbe Museum Hamburg, Germany.

Kunstgewerbe Museum, Berlin, Germany.

Kunstmuseum The Hague, Netherlands.

Mobile Museum, Mobile, U.S.A.

Museo de Arte en Vidrio, MAVA, Madrid, Spain.

Museum Jan, Amstelveen, Netherlands.

National Glasmuseum Leerdam, Netherlands.

National Glass Centre Sunderland, Great Britain.

National Liberty Museum Philadelphia, USA.

Palm Springs Art Museum, USA.

Ringling School of Art and Design, Basch Gallery, Sarasota, FL, USA.

Seven Bridges Foundation, Greenwich, NY, USA.

Zendai Himalayas Art Museum, Shanghai, China.